UK fan here, sorry guys (and sorry for the sig, but hey, it's a great quote) I'm just learning today about Gratham. Worst defensive gameplan I've ever seen. Prior to today, Johnson really did one thing well as a QB - throw the deep ball. Could not hit an intermediate pass for his life. His stats looked much worse than they are due to multiple deep ball drops over the season. Did Gratham only look at his stats and not the tape?
It felt like Gratham wanted Johnson to beat him with the deep ball, and well, you got it dude. Now granted, Johnson played pretty well overall, but allowing him to get his rhythm on the deep pass will do that. Even more baffling, the very first play of the game was a stellar deep throw... why would you continue to let him throw it deep??? Force Johnson to throw underneath where he's been terrible all year. Truly mind boggling.
The run game was sort of held in check (not counting the 83 yards on the ground by Johnson), but Boom and Snell were held under their averages with many no gains. However they broke out when they needed to. Everything went our way, but Gratham made sure it did.